Being able to tell a story is the cornerstone of what we do here at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. Being able to tell that story as quickly and as efficiently as possible is what makes for a successful business. Having a strategy and the tactics necessary is only part of being able to tell a story in real time.

For those of you that came to my session at BlogWorld and New Media Expo recently, welcome. For those of you looking for a real-time content toolkit, thank you for stopping by. As I recently wrote, being able to tell a story in real time is a vital part of a successful integrated communications strategy. Being able to be nimble and agile enough to post content in real time has a number of positive effects, including SEO boosts, community engagement and thought leadership.

In order to get started, there are a few things necessary. The absolute first thing you need is a content management system. For multiple author blogs, I like Windows Live Writer (disclaimer: #client). Sorry Mac guys, us PCs get to have all the fun with this one. Manage multiple blogs, manage formatting offline and draft posts when you have spotty Internet coverage. From there, even though this is real-time content, having a content calendar to supplement social channels and content marketing will help you reach your audience. This editorial calendar features social networks as well as a content flow for a multi-author blog. There are even several macros built in to help you plan your content.

From there, you need to be able to monitor trends and analyze success. In order to do that simply, I recommend a couple of tools, including Simply Measured, the Twitter client of your choice and Twendz.

Creating content in real time is far less about the strategy and more about trusting yourself and your writing. By having the systems in place in advance, all you need to do is open you text editor, write and hit publish. Having your team of content guerrillas at the ready is essential as is having an exciting story to tell.

Of course, these tips, tricks and hints would be useless if I didn’t give you the methods to use them, right? Below is a huge list of some great apps and tools for monitoring various social networks, social sharing sites and even forums (yes, forums).

I hope that you put these tools to use as you tell your story. And, if you’d like to learn more about how WE can help your company be the story it wants to tell, contact us and we’ll make some real-time magic happen.